He welcomed the liberators. Then heard them kill his friend

By Severin Carrell

The Independent

01 August 2004

Kifah Taha al-Mutari remembers buying five flowers for his family to wave
when British troops took control of Basra on 7 April last year. To him, like
hundreds of thousands of others in the city, the British were liberators.

But 15 months on, Mr Mutari feels he has very little to celebrate, other than
the fact he is still alive. Only a few months after the British unseated Saddam
Hussein's hated regime, Mr Mutari was in a military hospital fighting for his
life after three days of alleged sustained assaults by Queen's Lancashire
Regiment troops - beatings which caused his kidneys to fail.

And last
week, he was in London with the father of a man allegedly killed by the same
soldiers for what promises to be a long series of legal battles over his
case.

Mr Mutari was arrested by the QLR in a raid on a Basra hotel. That
operation led to the death in custody of Baha Mousa, the hotel's receptionist,
in the British headquarters in the city - a case first exposed by Robert Fisk in
The Independent on Sunday. Mr Mutari and Col Daoud Mousa, the dead man's
father, were key witnesses in last week's landmark three-day hearing at the High
Court, which is investigating claims the Army broke human rights legislation and
failed properly to investigate 37 cases of killings and abuse involving British
troops.

They came to see British justice in action. Speaking to the IoS
during the hearing, Col Mousa, a retired policeman, said: "When the occupation
began, we thought we would realise justice and democracy. I have come to
Britain to see democracy and justice at work." They believe the assaults were
inspired by revenge. The QLR unit was told the hotel staff were terrorists
linked to the murder several weeks earlier of a popular QLR officer, Capt Dai
Jones.

An Army Special Investigation Branch officer later told Col Mousa
their real suspect was the hotel's co-owner, Haitham Vaha, who escaped during
the raid, and is now thought to be on the run.

Baha Mousa was subjected
to particular abuse because his father had reported seeing QLR soldiers stealing
money from the hotel safe.

The case still profoundly affects both men.
Col Mousa was several times in tears during the hearing. Mr Mutari, an
experienced and once well-paid electrical engineer, said he has "very miserable
dreams" about the attack and suffers from tiredness and regular bouts of
pain.

He has written two poems in Arabic about his experiences. One, "In
the Torture Room", describes their bodies as being beaten as if they were just
sacks of grain - the cheapest commodity in Iraq.

Neither of the men bears
the British Army any ill-will. While highly critical of the failure of Army
commanders to control their troops, Col Mousa remarked: "We will not forget
that in very large armies, there will be people with no morals and very loose
conduct." Mr Mutari agrees. "Not all men in the British Army are no good. I
was in the British hospital for 64 days, and I had many friends there - good
people."

Up to six QLR soldiers are facing courts martial over this case,
and Col Mousa said he expects the Army to honour its promise to bring him back
to Britain to see them stand trial.